Remembrance Day 2021

We are having a few health issues, so we will stay close to home today. Our national broadcasters feature the ceremony in downtown Ottawa on TV. We tape it and watch it. This is the cenotaph in Ottawa.

We've attended quite a few ceremonies, back in the day. My students wrote some plays, songs, skits, and I coordinated school assemblies and prepared the order of program. We educated everyone on protocols, and began using inclusive language. Women served, as well as men. Our troops were and are diverse, and now the BIPOC community is gaining recognition. First Nations members were banned from joining the Legion. 

One year our entire school wrote to troops serving as Peacekeepers.
We ended up with a Pen Pal, PO1 Dennis Irwin, HMCS PRESERVER, who sent us photos. My grade 4/5 students made it into a video, putting the song we'd written to the photos.

We've been to ceremonies in Bala, Perth. Joseph Brian laid a wreath in Ottawa:

            

I scanned Photos of soldiers from the 1940s found in my mother's memory box.

We visited the Canadians in Afghanistan - Repatriation Memorial in 2012. 

When we lived in Muskoka, we found the beauty of a small town ceremony. Bala and Wahta took turns hosting the ceremony. These were the 2008 photos.

Sgt. at Arms, Keith Metcalfe, left.

This was my favourite ceremony on Wahta Territory, near Bala, 2009. 

Remembrance Day held on Wahta Lands, it was a moving, colourful ceremony. The water sparkled just over the hill. The trees, bare and brown, with the rich green of the pine, danced in the background, as we sang, and laid wreaths in memory of those who have fallen. 

 Branch President, Pam Davidson, led the ceremony. On her left, the Wahta Ladies and their beautiful drums. The ceremony followed protocol with our Sgt. at Arms, Keith Metcalfe, leading the troops at the left of the photo. A marvellous man, he delivers Meals on Wheels, as well as being a mover and shaker at our local legion. A former Paratrooper, he has contributed more than his share of service to his community, and his nation. 

 The Ladies of Wahta sang 'Oh, Canada' in Mohawk, and, below, Amazing Grace.

When and how does your country memorialize your fallen members?